Eryx.
I didn't sleep.
I sat in my chair, in the dark, staring at nothing.
That was new. I had never lost sleep over anything. Not wars. Not betrayals. Not the bodies I had put in the ground with my own hands. I had always slept like a man with a clean conscience — because in my orld, everything I had done was necessary.
But her face wouldn't leave me alone.
Please don't kill us too.
I pressed my knuckles against my mouth.
She had looked at me like I was the most terrifying thing she had ever encountered. Like I was something she needed to survive. Not a man. Not her mate. A threat.
I had marked her. I had given her something no other woman would ever receive from me. And she had spent years running from it like it was a curse.
Maybe it was.
I stood up and walked to the window. Th
